Browsing: Nuclear weapons

Last night, HBO host John Oliver delivered a harsh takedown of issues in the nuclear missile community on “Last Week Tonight.” The segment focused on the cheating scandal, former 20th Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Michael Carey and other problems, including outdated and broken launch control centers. The 15-minute clip included references to past mistakes and mishaps, including the 2007 incident in which a B-52 mistakenly flew with a nuclear payload. Oliver, however, did not mention changes in the Air Force since the cheating scandal broke, which includes overhauling the testing system for missileers, new money for launch control centers and other…

Don’t call it a comeback: The 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., has received the highest possible grade on its latest Limited Nuclear Surety Inspection. The wing, which handles 150 Minutemen II intercontinental ballistic missiles, failed the inspection earlier this year because of tactical-level errors during one exercise, but this time around inspectors found “zero errors or deficiencies,” an Oct. 24 news release from the wing says. “I am extremely proud of every member of Wing One — we were determined to prove to the world that we truly are the best at what we do day…

Reviewing history in the military, the Air Force and triumphs and misadventures in airpower. On Aug. 6, 1945, during World War II, an American B-29 bomber dubbed “Enola Gay” dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb, nicknamed the “Little Boy,” over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing approximately 110,000 Japanese citizens. Three days later, the U.S. dropped the second atom bomb on Japan, at Nagasaki, leading to Japan’s surrender in WWII. The U.S. had originally planned to drop the bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man,” on Nagasaki on Aug.11, five days after the first was dropped on Hiroshima, but weather forced crews…

One of the most infamous episodes in recent Air Force history, and the firings that followed, should serve as an example for another part of the government — the Department of Energy, lawmakers said Thursday. The 2007 incident in which nuclear weapons were mistakenly loaded on a B-52 at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., and flown to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., ultimately led to the resignation of then-Air Force Chief of Staff T. Michael Moseley and Secretary Michael Wynne. This accountability should be the example for the Department of Energy after the 2012 incident in which three elderly activists…

Retired Col. Steve Asher has had a few interesting years on his résumé. Asher was recently named head of nuclear security for the National Nuclear Security Administration after dozens of years in the Air Force, with a brief detour into big box stores. Asher retired in 2008 as a colonel and commander of the 341st Security Forces Group at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., according to Mother Jones. He served 33 years in the Air Force, including 10 as a nuclear security expert with the Air Force Office of the Inspector General, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel. While at…

First came the flying saucers, and now another Air Force experiment has shed some light on a past space endeavor. Except this time, it was to be at the expense of the moon. According to this recent article from Discovery News, Air Force Physicist Leonard Reiffel published a report in 1958 that proposed “nuclear detonations in the vicinity of the moon.” Amy Shira Teitel, the author of the Discovery News article, writes, “Reiffel envisioned soft landing three identical scientific instrument packages carrying seismometers and radiation detectors at random on the visible face of the moon. These in situ stations would…